MADAMANENI CHINNASWAMY Vs. JOINT COLLECTOR CHITTOOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS writ petition, originally filed by Madamaneni Chinnaswamy, raised the issue of legality and validity of orders dated 10. 11. 1995, 16. 06. 2000 and 16. 05. 2001 passed by respondent No. 2, the Revenue Divisional Officer, Chittoor and respondent No. 1 respectively. The petitioner having died, pending the writ petition, petitioner Nos. 2 to 8 were brought on record as his legal representatives. For convenience, the deceased original writ petitioner is hereinafter referred to as the petitioner. The petitioner purchased an extent of Ac. 0. 63 cents in Sy. No. 128/e of govindareddipalle Village, Thavanampalle Mandal, Chittoor District under registered sale deed dated 06. 11. 1967 from Sri Venkatswamy, Rajamma, govindaswamy and Gangulaiah. He also purchased another extent of Ac. 2. 18 cents in Sy. No. 129/2 of the same village under registered sale deed dated 26. 11. 1974. While he had been in possession and enjoyment of the said lands, respondent nos. 3 to 6 approached respondent No. 1 with representation dated 11. 09. 1995, which was evidently forwarded by respondent No. 1 to respondent No. 2 for taking action on the said representation. By the said representation, respondent Nos. 3 to 6 sought for restoration of possession of the said lands on the ground that the same were originally assigned to their grandfather late M. Gangulaiah and that they were in possession of the petitioner. It appears, respondent No. 2 issued a notice to the petitioner calling for his explanation and in response thereto, the petitioner submitted his explanation. By order dated 10. 11. 1995, respondent No. 2 held that the petitioner and his family members are financially sound and they are having Ac. 8. 38 cents jointly apart from three members of his family being salaried employees working in Central Government service and the sale transactions in favour of the petitioner are contrary to the provisions of section 3 (2) and (3) of the Andhra Pradesh Assigned Lands (Prohibition of transfers) Act, 1977 (for short, 'the Act') and restored the lands to respondent nos. 3 to 6. The said order was questioned by the petitioner before the Revenue divisional Officer. The petitioner specifically urged before the appellate authority that the property in question was purchased by him bona fide for consideration and falls within the exception contained in Section 3 (5) of the act. The appellate authority confirmed the order of respondent No. 2 for the same reasons as were assigned by the latter. Respondent No. 1, having followed suit by dismissing the revision petition filed by the petitioner, the present writ petition is filed calling in question these three orders. Sri S. V. Muni Reddy, learned counsel for the petitioners urged that all the three authorities committed serious error in not considering the explanation offered by the petitioner and that on the admitted facts of the case, the petitioner was entitled to the benefit of Section 3 (5) of the Act. Learned Assistant Government Pleader for Revenue (Assignments) and Sri p. V. Vidyasagar, learned counsel representing respondent Nos. 3 to 6 opposed the contentions of the learned counsel for the petitioners and submitted that the orders passed by the three authorities do not call for any interference. They further submitted that the petitioner failed to raise his specific pleas and prove that the ingredients of Section 3 (5) of the Act are satisfied. A perusal of the record shows that the petitioner filed his explanation to the show cause notice and the sum and substance of the said explanation is that he purchased the abovementioned properties under registered sale deeds for proper considerations from his own paternal uncle Gangulaiah and his other family members. While referring to the entire lands possessed by his family, the petitioner stated that his family consisted of four brothers, namely, Sri chinnaswamy, Sri Mogulaiah, Sri M. Ponnuswamy and Sri M. Doraswamy. He also mentioned the names of Sri Devanand and Sri Dorai Raj, who are the sons of Sri doraswamy, as constituting joint family. He mentioned that after purchasing the property the petitioner dug a well and brought the lands for cultivation by raising mango grove ten years earlier apart from raising groundnut crop by spending about Rs. 10,000/ -. He requested to regularize his possession by granting patta. Respondent No. 2 in his order failed to even refer to the explanation filed by the petitioner, let alone considering the same. The appellate authority also made a similar approach. The manner of disposal of revision by respondent No. 1 is no exception as he also failed to deal with the issue as to whether the petitioner satisfied the ingredients of Section 3 (5) of the Act. With a view to prohibit transfer of assigned lands in favour of well to do persons, the Act has been made. Section 2 (3) defined "landless poor person" as a person, who owns an extent of not more than 1. 011715 hectares (two and half acres) of wet land or 2. 023430 hectares (five acres) of dry land and who has no other means of livelihood. Section 3 (1) prohibits transfer of land assigned to a landless poor person for the purposes of cultivation or as a house site and declares that such a transfer shall be deemed never to have taken place and no right or title in such assigned land shall vest in any person by such transfer. Sub-Section (5) of Section 3, however, provided an exception to the general rule in favour of the persons who purchased the assigned lands being landless poor person in good faith and for valuable consideration from the original assignee or his transferee prior to the commencement of the Act and is in possession of such person for purposes of cultivation or as a house site on the date of such commencement. Section 4 empowers the District Collector or any other officer not below the rank of Mandal Revenue Officer to take possession of the assigned land, after evicting the person in possession and restore the assigned land to the original assignee or his legal heir, if the transfer was made for the first time and resume to the Government in case of subsequent transfers.

(2.) THE contents of the explanation submitted by the petitioner reveal that he is closely related to the assignee from whom he purchased the property by paying consideration under registered sale deeds and his joint family comprised as many as six persons. He also pleaded that he has been cultivating the property by raising mango garden and groundnut crop and that he spent about Rs. 10,000/- for making the land fit for cultivation. Though the petitioner has not specifically referred to the provisions of Section 3 (5) in his explanation, the explanation nevertheless refers to the ingredients of Section 3 (5 ). The reason for not making a specific reference to Section 3 (5) in his explanation is quite obvious, namely, that the petitioner is an illiterate belonging to the Scheduled Caste community and a perusal of the explanation shows that he took the assistance of another person, who wrote the explanation in Telugu and the petitioner affixed his thumb impression. Mere non-reference of Section 3 (5) would not have absolved respondent No. 2 from considering the petitioner's explanation with reference to the said provision. Though the petitioner specifically invoked the provision of Section 3 (5) before the appellate authority and respondent No. 1 in the appeal and revision filed by him respectively, they also failed to consider the petitioner's case from the said prospective. Learned counsel for respondent Nos. 3 to 6 urged that the case may be remitted back to the lower authorities for consideration of this aspect. Having given my serious thought to this submission, I have not felt inclined to accept the same, because the petitioners are vexed with this litigation, which was initiated at the instance of respondent Nos. 3 to 6 for more than 23 years. I feel that it is in the interests of both the warring groups that a quietus is placed on the litigation. Therefore, I decided to dispose of this writ petition on merits on the basis of the material available on record. On the facts noted above, the main point that arises for consideration in this writ petition is whether the petitioner satisfied the ingredients of section 3 (5) of the Act.

(3.) IN his order respondent No. 2 came to the conclusion that the family of the petitioner was wealthy, as it owned Ac. 8. 38 cents of dry land. Another additional ground on which the order of respondent No. 2 was based was that three members of the petitioner's family, namely, Sri Ponnuswamy, Raju and Sulochana are working in Income Tax Department, Tirupati and living separately and that the petitioner is living in a two storied building at Govindareddipalle. With regard to the extent of the lands possessed by the petitioner's family, respondent No. 2 has not indicated whether the said lands were owned by the joint family at the time of purchase of the properties by the petitioner. Be that as it may, even assuming that they were owned and possessed by the family at the time of purchase, the total extent owned by the joint family, even according to respondent No. 2, was Ac. 8. 38 cents. The law is well settled that while determining the status of a landless poor person, shares of all the major members of the joint family have to be computed on the basis of notional partition. (Boddeda Samba Murthy vs. The Tahsildar, Anakpalli1 ). Even according to respondent No. 2, the family of the petitioner consisted of the petitioner, his wife, Smt. Sulochana, Sri K. Raja and Sri M. Dorairaj. There will be at least three shares excluding the petitioner's wife from the notional partition and each member of the joint family will get about Ac. 2. 65 cents of dry land and each of them can purchase at least Ac. 2. 35 cents of dry land or about Ac. 1. 15 cents of wet land to claim the benefit under Section 3 (5)of the Act. Admittedly, the total extent of land purchased in the name of the petitioner was Ac. 2. 92 cents, which is evidently dry land. Even if the said land is considered as wet land, the petitioner's family, consisting of not less than three members, still continued to be landless poor persons.